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Emotional, embittered and raw were the pleas made in a packed Windsor courtroom Tuesday, as victims of the diluted chemo scandal asked a judge to reject a $2.4-million class-action settlement that works out to $1,500 each.

They called the settlement a pittance and a slap in the face.

“These people should be held accountable, and I only wish your honour had the power to say ‘$5 million for each person,’ ” cancer survivor Keith Salmons told Superior Court Justice Gregory Verbeem, after accusing lawyers of scrolling through their phones and smirking while weeping objectors from London and Windsor addressed the court.

The firms that provided and purchased the diluted chemotherapy drugs for 1,202 cancer patients in Windsor, London, Peterborough, Oshawa and New Brunswick knew that they “screwed up,” Salmons said.

“How these people, all of them, go to bed at night with a clear conscience is beyond me.”

More than half the patients who received the diluted drugs were treated at London Health Sciences Centre.

The diluted chemo drugs were distributed to five hospitals by Medbuy Corp., a London-based bulk buying agency for hospitals.

Marchese Hospital Solutions of Hamilton supplied the drugs.

Lawyers for both the class-action victims and the defendants called on the judge to endorse the settlement, arguing it was the best victims could hope for in the absence of any proof that taking diluted cancer drugs harmed anyone.

Scores of patients who were given the drugs in 2012 and 2013 have died since.

Jen Rumble held up a photo of her sister Christine and her two young daughters as she ended her address. Christine died at 31, and there’s no way of knowing if she’d still be alive had she received proper strength chemo, Rumble said. “She needed the best medicine, the toughest medicine . . . She never got that.”

She called the $1,500 a disgusting insult: “I work as a nurse in emergency and I understand that mistakes happen, but this is a disgrace.”

Justice Verbeem told the dozen objectors who spoke and about 70 more who supported them: “I listened very carefully to what you said and it commands a great deal of deliberation.” He reserved his decision.

If the settlement is rejected, “there is no more money, I will not be able to get more money,” to sweeten the offer, warned Eric Hoaken, the lawyer for Medbuy.

Medbuy, Marchese Hospital Solutions and five hospitals are named in the class action.

“The settlement,” said Hoaken, “is an elegant solution that provides a dignified and responsible closure on a circumstance that everyone agrees is regrettable.”

London lawyer Mike Peerless, one of the class-action lawyers along with the Winbdsor firm Sutts, Strosberg, said though he was moved by the victims’ “heartfelt” and “heartbreaking” statements, he has to look at the case rationally.

He said the class-action lawyers found no evidence of a single patient who suffered any significant damage from taking the diluted drugs. They also couldn’t find a single expert — no doctor, psychiatrist, oncologist or clinical pharmacologist — who would say the underdosing caused patients’ cancer to worsen. He warned if the settlement is rejected, the class-action lawsuit would be doomed.

“The terms of the settlement are rational, they’re reasonable and they’re found in the facts of the case,” Peerless said, asserting that though 49 people filed objections, “the vast majority of the class members do favour the settlement.”

The victims, such as breast cancer survivor Colleen Marentette, said they were tired of being told the damage they suffered — including psychological damage — doesn’t count.

“I live with the fear of cancer returning,” because she didn’t receive the right dose, she said.

Another speaker, Jeanne Omstead-Mullins, said she wakes up every morning wondering: “Is this going to be the day?” the cancer comes back. “It’s a mistake that never should have happened, it was negligence by everyone involved,” said Omstead-Mullins, a Ford worker who criticized the lack of quality control in health care.

“There are now children who are motherless, orphaned,” she said. “Could this have been prevented with the proper inspections?”

One of the vocal opponents of the settlement, mother of three Sarah Johnson, 41, was unable to attend Tuesday’s court date because she was in hospital, coping with terminal metastatic breast cancer.

“That’s how close to home this strikes all of us,” Louise Martens, a leader among the diluted chemo victims, told the court. She said she’s been told the $1,500 is “go away money.”

“Why are we unworthy?” she asked. “Why are we not being treated like priceless lives?”